3.

Perhaps a week later, I received the greatest joy since I had realized my life had been saved that second week in September. My brother Jean wrote me a letter.

It was undated, so I could not be sure how long it had taken to reach me. The address was simple enough: "Please deliver to Mlle Manon Lapaine at the new Opéra." The intrepid little missive had clung to life and made it all the way into my hands.

I am well, he wrote, so do not trouble yourself on my account. Business has been poor because of the bombings, but I am comfortable on my savings.

I am overjoyed to hear you are safely situated at the Opéra. I am sending you, along with this letter, a copy of Charivari, for I am sure you must be completely without worldly communication. If you like, I will send you my paper as often as I can to keep you updated on the city's gossip.

Your ever-loving brother,

Jean

What a refreshing voice was Jean's! Even amid the war, so good-humored. In the place of Collier's grating sarcasm and Babette's vapid quiet, Jean's one letter was enough to make me smile so long my mouth's muscles reprimanded me wordlessly. I was lonely; I hadn't realized it until then. Life without Jean had been too terrible, and I saw it only then, gazing at his cartoon, so cleverly drawn in Charivari.

Still, I, who knew my brother so well, could discern his cartoons, like those of the other satirists, were strangely sad and aching. Under the pseudonym of Toli, my brother's somber cartoon reflected the ideas of Daumier and all the rest--French gaiety was gone, replaced by the heartache of a helpless nation.

I was soon to be met with a far more personal heartbreak, one that made the cartoons in the steady influx of papers my brother sent cringe in comparison.

The patients healed quickly and were set out on their ways; two were soldiers and opted to remain posted at the Opéra. The third, a civilian, left us and attempted to regain what life he had left. Who knows what became of him? During this time, there was little activity. The war seemed at a painful standstill, Paris neck-deep in shelling and a bitter cold creeping upon everyone. It had been so long since I'd had a decent meal that had not consisted of the horse meat and old wine and maybe a heel of bread. The only kindness in life were Jean's papers, offering solace and hope that this war might yet be won.

Babette spoke to me less and less, and it appeared she was unhappy with her current post. When she did speak, it was of her discontent and wish to leave the Opéra. She even spoke of abandoning her vocation. For me this was strange indeed, for never in the several years I'd known her had the girl wanted anything but a convent life of chastity.

Added to this perturbing problem was the unresolved issue of the missing morphine. Collier had questioned his men and none had admitted to taking the morphine; all vehemently denied any theft. Collier was satisfied with this answer, but I still had my doubts. Collier attributed the disappearance--he refused to call it theft--of the morphine to hungry rats who had scuttled over it during the night. I was unconvinced.

And when two more vials had gone missing, I was in a foul temper. The day had been lackluster and cold. I was hungry for sweets (as usual), and Babette had been disturbingly apathetic.

Before the midday dinner, I walked with an angry gait to the backstage area where Collier's men spent their free time, smoking their awful cigars and playing game after game of cards, betting away salaries they would never receive.

It was the first time I had seen Collier play cards, and I watched for a moment as he sat in intense concentration, scratching his sweaty moustache over the cards, his beetle brows furrowed. Really, his appearance was almost comic. If I hadn't been in such an ungainly temper I would not have disturbed this amusing vision.

"I would speak to you, Captain," I declared loudly. The room was sullenly silent for a moment, then the scrape of Collier's chair was followed by a cloud of smoke and Collier muttering. As we walked out, he said, "Mademoiselle Lapaine, again? What can I do for you?"

"I regret to inform you," I said quietly, "that two more vials of morphine have gone missing." I watched his cigar slide in and out, between his fingers, nervous and impatient.

"I assured you," he said, "that it was unwise to pursue this matter any further."

"Yes, sir," I replied, "but we are losing precious war supplies. There could come a day, Captain, when we need the morphine and we will not have it."

He nodded slowly, is eyes edging out from under his brows to look at me with curious hesitancy. "Yes. I suppose you're right. There is nothing I would dislike more than to see a man in pain because of our sloth."

"So you will allow me to question your men?" I piped in eagerly.

He gave me a glacial, silencing look. "Mademoiselle," he snapped, "you see corruption everywhere except within."

My cheeks burned with the sudden shock of his accusation. "Do you think I would take morphine, Captain?" I fumed, veritably shaking with fury.

"Not you," Collier interrupted with irritation. "The girl--Soeur Marie Babette."

Rage overwhelmed me, and I could not control the look of venom from devouring my face as I contemplated the gall of the man to suggest such a thing. "Babette is a sister of charity--a nun, Collier!"

"Haven't you seen her empty eyes? That cocoon of nonchalance she lives in? Do not imagine me ignorant of the drug's effects!" He shrugged apathetically, and I could no longer remain. Irascible, I gathered up my skirt and stormed away without even a polite reply. The insult! The impetus, to accuse Babette of an addiction! It was difficult for me to retain any semblances of sense at all while such incendiary words coursed through my brain.

I rushed to our singers' foyer, determined to confront Babette with this accusation. When I entered, I was at first puzzled because she was nowhere in sight. Even in her disgruntled state, she had never left our quarters without telling me. Panicked that I had let my young charge disappear, I began to call her name.

I was most surprised when my reply was the sound of hysterical female laughter. It was issuing, I realized from inside our canvas tent. Stepping inside, I was shocked and silenced by the sight of Babette laughing insensibly, surrounded by tell-tale signs of Collier's truth: an empty vial and a tourniquet upon her arm.

Sighing in the depth of betrayal, I stole out of the room, taking only my shawl with me. I knew full well there was no place I could go. It was too cold to leave the Opéra, and to go below, to the cellars, was forbidden. Suddenly seized by a disappoint in all mankind; I no longer cared what Collier had said about the cellar. I rushed down to the first one below the stage, discounting, in my despair, the fact the passageway was lit with only one dim lantern.

In the solitude, I sat for a time in simple, cathartic thought. Was this all my life was supposed to be? Mocked by a surly officer who had probably never known happiness of his own and could not allow anyone else that pleasure--nursemaid to a girl who had sacrificed her soul to God and was sullying it with morphine--slave to a war I had never asked for and punished for trying to help, always and forever tormented by the shades I had let die . . .

I was alone, it seemed. Collier disdained me, Babette thought it decent to deceive me utterly; my brother lived in mortal peril far away; parents conceivably gone forever; and never to know love or peace.

I should have wept. But I could not make the tears come. Even in that hole in the ground, shivering in the cold of late October, I felt under the yoke of human vision, unalone after all--as though a creature--good or evil, I could not say--was peering markedly down my shoulder and wondering how I had become so weak. "Live!" this unnamed shadow shrieked, filling my bloodstream with the warm feeling of survival. The war would end, I told myself steadily, sooner or later. Then you will never be away from Jean again.

Comfort was the lunar tide that swept over me, prompting me to regain my spirits and live once more. So up I trudged, back to the stage level, and back to the singers' foyer.

Babette was sitting on a chair, innocently darning a stocking. I saw her glance up at me, and the brightness of her eyes convinced me the drug had worn off. Wearily I unpinned my hair piece from my hair and folded it up into a pile. Babette looked at me and smiled, then realized what my cold eyes meant; then her smile dropped completely, and she swallowed guiltily.

"It's not as if I've done anything wrong," she said peevishly.

I knelt beside her with a look of shock and pity. "Don't you know what morphine does to you, child? That feeling of power is just an illusion, and when it's gone you'll do anything to have it again."

She twisted violently away. "Don't you tell me I can't have a bit of happiness now and then!" she cried wildly. "Rich people pay to forget--can't I forget sometimes? I've done a lot more for this country than the rich, haven't I?" she was pacing, well-nigh hysterical. She looked at me in despair. "Manon--aren't you ever overwhelmed? Tempted to forget all the anguish?"

I swallowed--yes, I was well-acquainted with anguish. "Yes, but you've taken a vow--"

"Oh, who are you to preach to me?" she interrupted fiercely. "You were not forced to the convent by your parents--you came because no man would ever want you!"

Her hand instantly clamped over her mouth in regret. She tapped my shoulder in distress. "Oh, Manon, I'm sorry--I didn't mean that . . .!"

For the moment I ignored her. A tinge of anger welled up in me as I considered how true her blunt words were. Yes, the reason for my self-propelled launch into nursing was prompted by an accident. I was fifteen or sixteen, at an early but conceivably marriageable age. In essence, the cart was going too fast, it tipped over, my abdomen was caught under the wheel . . . I lived, of course, but not without scars--and the incurable inability to bear children. I had seen several doctors over the course of my life, and their diagnoses had been unanimous.

I could have still married, I suppose; I could have deceived a man into giving me his fortune and patronage. But the thought of the wedding night, on the bridal bed, and having to confess complete dysfunction . . . Hardly a subject suited for discussion, but it always lurked in the back of my mind. And the torture that I would never have a child of my own--it had been enough to easily send me running to a society of devout women.

The years as a girl studying at the convent went on, and I had growing confidence that I could be happier--and make some use of myself--by abandoning my orders. Perhaps in my selfish heart there was a greedy hope that I might find a love that would transcend my flaws, but this was a craving easily dismissed.

I realized, at length, that Babette was talking to me again, in a supplicant and penitent voice. "Manon . . . I only took two vials--just two--I swear by all that's holy, I only had two!"

She was tugging at my gown so hard the straight pins fell out and my apron drooped. It took me a moment to realize what she was saying exactly. Then it struck me--if she had taken only two, then two were still missing! I shook her shoulders until she looked up at me. "Are you absolutely certain, Babette?"

Her look was suddenly sober and God-fearing. "Yes. I am sure."

I let go of her forcefully and considered for a moment. If she was telling the truth, then perhaps Collier was lying to me. Someone else had to have taken the morphine. Drugs, I was sure, just didn't disappear!

"Do you know who took the other two?" I asked her quietly. She shook her head. "Can you curb this habit?" I whispered. "Do you have the will to stop using the morphine?"

She blinked. She swallowed. She looked down at her fidgeting hands, then back at me. "Yes," she said in a resolved, though almost inaudible voice.

"Good," I said curtly. "Then I will tell no one about this."

I got up to leave and she asserted in a tiny voice, "But Captain Collier knows . . ."

I inwardly cursed the man. "I will have to persuade him to stay silent, then."

Fortunately Collier needed no persuasion on the account of silence. We did not mention the morphine again that first week in November, when the snows came. Ah, Paris adrift and lost in the blankets of snow and the ice flows that soon closed up the Seine. The situation grew grimmer as starvation and cold forced the city to her knees under the heel of the advancing Germans. Frostbite was all Babette and I seemed to treat. Aside from this, we knitted countless woolens for the soldiers and kept ourselves entertained by the news from my brother and his merciless inundation of fearful cartoons. More and more mordant became the wit of the satirists, with all the cynicism that comes of war. The occasional notes from Jean said that while he was, for once, making a fortune, the real thing he lacked was food. When I responded he could come to the Opéra and have some horse flesh, he declined the offer.

I had secretly decided upon a plan to catch the morphine thief. I brought the crate of morphine to the opening of the canvas tent and resolved to stay awake to seize the clever miscreant. For some time, the plan seemed a poor strategy. Then one night . . . It really was, I suppose, by chance that I even made the discovery. Even I, the insomniac nurse, could not stay awake all night. But it happened that night it was so cold in our desolate canvas tent that I was forced to contemplate existence longer than usual. My excellent hearing was proven a veritable asset when I thought I discerned the faint rustling of cloth. I looked first at Babette, but she was soundly asleep, lying, prone, totally without movement.

Then--the soft but unmistakable sound of the crate being opened. I sat up quickly and peeked my head out of the tent--just in time to see a shadow pause and begin running. Determined to triumph, I grabbed the lantern I had left at my bedside and started off in pursuit. The poor light aided the lengthy shadow in escaping, but I resolved to follow. Squinting my eyes painfully to keep up with dashing, mellifluous shape, I was soon astonished at the speed of the being. Having shunned a corset like most of my order, I was unheeded in my feverish pace, yet this shadow was almost preternatural in its speed and agility. I watched in awe as the barely discernible creature melded in and out of the darkness like a disappearing and reappearing specter--ah, I thought, with sudden wryness, so this is Collier's ghost.

Insensible of where I was going, only following the capricious and supernaturally endowed being which was at once a ghost and a morphine thief, I realized all at once in this sudden and rapid flight that I was in the second cellar of the Opéra stage. Below and beyond anything I'd ever ventured before. The momentary confusion caused me to pause and the quick, merciless shadow took the opportunity to disappear completely. Regaining my senses, I turned a corridor, panting, looking at the foreboding steps that gestured downward, as if into a mausoleum at the base of a great house.

Gripping the lantern purposely in my hand, I contemplated journeying further into that darkness. What if the information Collier given about the lake was true? I was suddenly possessed with a desire to see the bowels of Paris. I knew the catacombs had been sealed at the advent of the siege, yet I was sure the level of the lowest cellar--if my impressions proved correct--would be analogous to those damp hallways of the catacombs. Then I began to wonder--why had the shadow descended so far? Surely it must have known the cellars eerily well to be able to navigate the stairs and twists in path so effortlessly. Indeed, this underground empire would have been a prudent hiding place to crawl to, especially in the midst of this war. Perhaps I really had come to meet the whispered ghost Collier and the other soldiers touted. If this fictitious ghost, did, in fact, reside below, to venture into his domain might be unwise. Better to come again when he was lulled into false security, in the day and with National Guard soldiers in the wings to sniff him out.

So I returned to the world of light, rescued from the purgatory of my own curiosity and revenge. And the next day, after a restless night of planning and seething, imagining the triumph of lifting the sodden blame from Babette's young shoulders, I confronted Collier directly. I caught him in the back of the foyer de danse in front of a broken mirror washing in a metal bowl. He was bending over the cold water, dressed only in his shirt-sleeves, his menacing straight razor balanced precariously in his left hand, a ball of fluffy white cream in his other.

When he looked up at the mirror, I saw his expression change to instant disapproval. This was slightly off-putting, but I remained, my hands folded demurely though my heart raged inside. When he turned around, the white feathery liquid still tinged over his upper lip and his half shaved whiskers, giving his strained, ireful eyes a comic touch. Still clutching the razor in his hand, he approached slowly. "Mademoiselle Lapaine. Early to rise, I see." His voice was sharp and unhappy. I could already tell he was in a strangely dangerous mood. I'd never seen him this angry before and I had the impression that he, like I, had not received the ordinate amount of sleep.

"I will be brief, Captain," I said shortly, taken aback, watching with slight awe the trembling blade in his left hand. "I have found the morphine thief."

He stared at me without a reaction. "Yes. The poor girl. Have you put a stop to it?"

I looked down remembering suddenly I was at this man's toilette and how indecent it would have been deemed among society. "No," I replied coldly. "I mean someone else--I followed him last night. He came to our very bed without making a sound--really, an experienced thief, I must say."

"Wait a moment," Collier interrupted, wiping his face on a grimy towel. "You followed someone--last night?" He eyed me skeptically.

"Yes," I said. "I was waiting awake, and I heard someone come near, so I took the lantern and followed. But I lost him in the cellars, so I must request--"

"The cellars?" he questioned with grim fury, peering at me through thunder cloud-capped eyes.

I realized my mistake at once, biting my lip and looking down with soft fear. "I believe I told you," the Captain went on with a careful, terrifyingly satin voice, "that you were not allowed to go down below the stage. Not only for your own safety, but so that my men and I might be spared the unhappy task of going down to collect your remains."

I reacted to the harsh words as if struck. I took a cautious step backwards, reflecting uneasily that Collier was still holding the razor and advancing. "I have been more than civil to you renegade nuns and fulfilled all of your ridiculous requests! But it is not to be borne when you disobey strict orders designed for the defense of the government and the country!"

He was raging insensibly now , and I pondered if this Collier was indeed the same on I had met a month ago. "No need for such language," I admonished, backing away, gulping, staring at the shiny silver blade . . .

"This is a war, woman!" he roared, suddenly grabbing my shoulder mercilessly. I pulled away, crying out in distress, pressing myself against the wall in supplicating, frightened terror.

He dropped the razor and turned away, raking his hands back through his hair. "Pardon me," he said hoarsely and turned away. My eyes wide and unsure, I rushed from the room.